When does the Child Protective System become abusive itself?

When does the Child Protective System become abusive itself?
Randy Johnson 05 Jul 2006 21:00 GMT

http://www.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/841989.shtml



Oregon Child Protective Services is violating US Constitutional
Rights, as it sets out to protect our children from abuse. Oregon is not
the only state doing this, but my investigation is limited to my state
at this time. Abuse by government against its citizens is also abuse.
Read on!

When does the Child Protective System become abusive itself? By: Randy
Johnson Friedrich Hayek, 1960 “The greatest danger to liberty today
comes from … the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned
with what they regard as the public good.� When one thinks of the child
protection agencies who are to protect our children from neglect and
abuse, one would seldom think this very system capable of abuse;. The
numbers themselves show a need for specialized attention to child abuse
and neglect. Enter Oregon State in 1989 with legislation creating the
Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) whose funding and history is as shown by
the Oregon Department of Justice. This shows the History of CAMI, the
States program to provide funding to this new MDT system in order to
facilitate the handling of Oregon’s incoming child abuse complaints.
This system also seems to have become a gatekeeper to the judicial
process, controlling which cases need more investigation / evidence, are
unable to determine, or require prosecution and / or jail. With over
three unfounded cases to each founded case reported statewide, it is
imperative that the local MDT be above reproach, professional, and
thorough in its investigations and determinations. Especially when one
considers the fact that the total victims has not surpassed the 1999
high, but rather is following a normal average trend, with rises and
falls, ever since the programs inception. The only statistic that has
over doubled since the MDT systems inception is the total reports, which
has steadily risen since 1996. Due to the nature of child abuse crimes,
the accused is often incarcerated awaiting trial. Look at the Total
Child Abuse / Neglect Reports chart (Oregon DHS) and realize that more
cases were unfounded in 2004 (35,902) than all the reported cases total
for the year 2000 statewide. Because these innocently accused are
tax-paying, many times home-owning, hard-working fellow Oregonians with
families, the law enforcement members of the MDT have a duty to protect
them as well. “Protect the Innocent� used to be painted on almost all
police cars and today that must still apply to those who have been
accused of a crime they did not commit. The District Attorney has an
obligation to the voters who elect them to enforce the law, but this
does not include prosecuting and incarcerating the innocent. The Child
Protective Services has an obligation to protect Oregon’s children and
preserve the family structure, not rip innocent family members out of
the home on false accusations. As Simone Weil said, (1933) “Every
sovereign, centralized state is potentially aggressive and dictatorial.�
As one can see from the map below, many of the counties with a high
percentage of households under the poverty line have the highest abuse
prosecution rates. The chart below that shows the disparity between
counties in case outcomes. The simple fact that excessive prosecution
rates and very low unfounded case numbers are only in the states poorest
counties (with some population) raises the question of why is this only
occurring where most are financially-challenged (not-a-crime), and
therefore least able to defend themselves? The fact that none of the
richest counties, the poorest county (Malheur), and many other counties
with the same poverty level do not have the excessive prosecution rates,
and these counties include most of the states largest cities, makes this
even more questionable. These poorest counties are the only counties
where ‘unable to determine’ rates are over 50%, (statewide average
around 36%) unfounded cases are from just over 10% to just under 20%,
(statewide average almost 40%; with the largest cities counties posting
from just under to just over 50%). The only statistic within 10% of the
statewide average is the founded case rate, the one statistic that
should be spiking, but isn’t. The other trend you will note in the 2001
DHS study data (chart below) is the fact that almost all of the largest
population counties post unfounded cases as the largest percentage, and
those counties where founded cases are the largest percentage also post
unfounded rates within 10% of the state average. The counties with the
largest percent of unable to determine cases, leads one to question the
very investigative abilities of this MDT approach, as it now exists, The
members of the Jackson County Multidisciplinary / Joint Investigation
Team (MDT) include the Jackson County District Attorney, Oregon State
Child Protective Services, County and City Police Detectives who handle
abuse cases, and representatives of the Children’s Advocacy Center.
These MDT’s have become the ‘gatekeeper’ for all child abuse cases in
the county. You will note in the Adult Criminal Process chart below,
distributed by the Medford Child Advocacy Center to parents, that the
MDT handles everything from the initial report to the decision to
arrest, and then it goes to the District Attorney. Except in Jackson
County where the DA is on the MDT. The authors of a May 2000 study,
Karen C. Tumlin and Rob Geen, collected information from 31 states
pertaining to the child abuse report screening and assessment process.
Using 1996 data appearing in this report, Oregon compared to the
national median as shown in the table below: Percentage of investigated
Oregon National reports that were substantiated…………. 59.7%………….38.0%
Oregon State CPS was prosecuting 21% more than the national average
Percentage of all reports substantiated…………. 36.7%………….26.7% in 1996,
just four years after the MDT system was finally funded. Entire Tumlin
and Geen report available at the Oregon DHS website under the Child
Protective Services division Tumlin and Geen also concluded “since few
states have explicit guidelines, workers use their discretion and biases
when making screening decisions.� This becomes obvious when parents tell
you quotations of CPS Caseworkers stating, “Parents are not qualified,
or properly trained to decide if their child is abused or not� and “We
marry these men, have their children, and then they abuse them� or “I
have more power in these cases than the judges and courts do.� This last
statement may seem like a bad joke, until you interview a person or two
that was exonerated by a jury, and then show letters demanding they
produce more evidence of their innocence to Oregon CPS, or the agency
will find them guilty. The letters acknowledge the court by stating that
if the court decision agreed with CPS, and found you guilty, you could
simply ignore this notice. In one case Oregon CPS did all of this over a
year after the court acquitted them! The funding of this entire system
should be from the state, removing any and all ties to convictions
affecting budget funding, just like the Oregon State Courts for obvious
reasons. The overall ‘big picture’ view of all the funding and its
distribution via grants is provided by the Oregon Department of Justice
Crime Victims’ Assistance Section Grant Unit (2005) as follows: These
same non-profit and local community based programs are the very ones who
stand to benefit financially from such gains, as they are attached to
the very agencies and key players who control when and if any sexual
abuse case is founded, or not. Then we come to the input from those
involved in the system itself. When one begins to hear trial lawyers
say, “You are innocent until proven guilty in America, unless you are
charged with child abuse in Oregon, then it is the other way around� you
begin to wonder. Trial lawyers, family members, and some alleged abusers
state the system is ‘railroading’ the innocently accused without proper
investigation. Studies show this may be due, in-part, to lack of
training with Child Protective Services (CPS), District Attorneys (DA),
and Law Enforcement detectives handling the investigation process.
Another factor appears to be a funding issue, with much of the systems
intake agency structure being funded through non-tax-dollar sources,
including the fees and fines levied on the convicted. Studies show that
Oregon’s shrinking state agency funding has contributed with overloaded
CPS caseworkers and a shortage of qualified credentialed supervisory
staff as required for oversight of the process in a timely manner. In
the big picture, all of the nineteen county MDT’s violating Oregonian
families in this fashion, control a portion of their funding, simply by
how many convictions they achieve. All nineteen together make for a
raise for all counties, and may be why Medford, a smaller city in
Oregon, has the best staffed, funded, and equipped Children’s Advocacy
Center in the State. Medford is located in one of Oregon’s poorest
counties, and has a 51% unable to determine rate. Why become evident
when a young lady and her young child showed paperwork ordering them to
make monthly medical exams (at the Advocacy Center), or risk having her
child taken by CPS. For all intensive purposes, the State may have well
put a gun to this young mothers head! The mother was not the person
accused of the possible abuse, but she had to live here for over a year
(she wanted to return to her families state), keeping the monthly exams,
as the MDT kept her case in the “Unable-to-determine� category the
entire time. Over a year later, the case was dropped, mother and child
fled Oregon, and the Child Advocacy Center added 15 exams to justify the
need for funding their full time medical staff! This detail allows one
to see how the local MDTs are directly funded from fees and fines
charged convicted criminals, and so founded cases could become more
important to local public and non-profit support agencies and MDTs
budgets than just fulfilling the intended mission to keep our children
safe. This however, is not unique to Oregon’s funding strategy. The
Federal government is providing funding in the same manner to the exact
same programs. The Oregon Department of Justice chart shows the flow of
VOCA funds. The ethical implications of this pattern of funding from the
Federal government, verses thirty-six counties in Oregon working from a
single state fund, are much lower. First, the funding is divided up
between all fifty states. Second, the state distributes to the
respective counties via project or basic grants. With nineteen of
Oregon’s most poverty stricken counties pumping a growing percentage of
cases into the courts, with high conviction rates, coupled with low
unfounded case rates, it does not take long to see how the overall state
fund from which the county MDT’s and local Victim Assistance Programs
could quickly create a raise. Also, consider that Oregon States general
fund dollars have continued to shrink for a number of years now. Since
the intake process, after the initial report, begins with the local MDT,
the integrity and ethics of the team, and its operation, becomes
imperative. This is as much for the protection of the children and
victims as it is for those who are innocent and accused of abuse. The
MDT serves as the gatekeeper for the entire process, the first step,
charged with the joint investigation of such complaints and making the
decision if the case appears founded and proceeds on for prosecution
(and trial) or not as an unfounded complaint. The entire process is
dependant on the integrity, expertise, judgment, and investigative
talents of this expert county team, and so are your life, liberty, and
happiness if you are ever accused falsely. When the intake coordinator
for Medford’s Child Advocacy Center was asked if they had a procedure or
policy in place to handle situations where the child is less than
truthful, she answered with, “I have never even considered that.� This
should scare every parent in the State! Any law written which unfairly
relies on or assumes the absolute honesty of a minor child, could not
have been a parent when authored. Is there a parent out there who thinks
their kid is incapable of lying? I don’t care how good they are, or how
well you raised them, they will all lie more than once before they grow
up, some more than others. The meaning of the word ‘investigate’ may
provide some insight into what has gone wrong with the investigation
process. The problem is that there is two definitions at play here.
Merriam Webster's Dictionary of Law (1996)
(http://dictionary.lp.findlaw.com/ ) defines: Investigate
[in-'ves-te-'gat] -gated -gating : to observe or study by close
examination and systematic inquiry specif : to make (a criminal suspect)
the subject of inquiry and study for the purpose of establishing
probable cause: to make a systematic examination esp : to conduct an
official inquiry The other definition is from the child advocacy
profession, where the term ‘investigation’ is defined as, Investigation
Collecting and assessing objective information to determine if a child
has been or is at risk of being abused or neglected. This often includes
face-to-face contact with the child and results in a decision about
whether the report is substantiated. Child Advocacy Central (WA),
Understand Child Welfare Terms,
http://www.childadcentral.org/resources/terms.aspx The difference
between the two definitions lies in the second sentence of the Child
Advocacy definition of investigation. How do you make an objective
decision based only on a face-to-face interview with an accuser? From
there everything depends on whose definition you operate under, and so
does the outcome. If the MDT conducts an official investigation and
questions all involved witnesses they may prevent the prosecution of an
innocent Oregonian, and the resulting effects on that family. This
system prevents any criminal (or otherwise) penalty for less than
truthful children! If you go by the Child Advocacy definition, you would
need no more than to believe the child, and as scary as that sounds,
county MDT’s and Oregon Child Protective Services are doing exactly
that! The ethical legal delema for those who oversee the MDTs, and the
officers of the court who are MDT members, is which definition of
investigate is in the best interest of the public trust when charged
with the task of protecting our children from abuse? Murder is the only
crime higher on Oregon’s felony list than felony child abuse charges.
Now consider the fact that one Jackson County investigation caused one
judge to postpone a trial, because the DA had not yet spoken with the
only eyewitness! One father, of an alleged abuse victim said, “I
questioned both the police dectective and the CPS caseworker, after the
interviews with the children were done. The bottom line from both, to
answer the question ‘why’ they proceeded with the case was, “I Believed
Her.� (referring to the formally abused teen who made the abuse
accusation)� In this case the report was made to a school dean, and CPS
and Medford Police Department (MPD) got the report the week before
Christmas 2004 (mandatory reporting). The first interview with the
reporting victim was a week into 2005 (3 weeks later). The second victim
was interviewed a week after that (a month later). Two weeks later a
third interview was done with a resident child of the accused mans home.
(Month and a half after the original report) This is troubling since CPS
regulations and policies require investigations to be complete within 30
days, unless you need more investigation time. In this case, the
investigation ended with a 50+-year-old tax-paying homeowner in jail on
the accusers statement only. This despite the second reported eyewitness
/ abuse victim said nothing happened, and a third child (a resident of
the suspects home) stated the same. One accusing statement out of the
two alleged victims, who were to have been abused in each other’s
presence, was enough for the MDT to prosecute. When a CPS administrator
was asked about this she said, “We are adults and we can roll with the
punches.� How many other adults have been rolled over with such a punch
based on a lie? The truth in this case is that this was the accusers way
of getting dad back home. So I ask again, when does the CPS System
become abusive? The DA or the MDT never spoke with the other young teen
that reported the story to her junior high dean out of anger at the
accusing teen victim. No one official interviewed the residents of the
suspects home or family, even after the arrest. The parents of the
second teen to have been abused, had their first contact with the police
detective after a week of calls attempting to find our why their
daughter was pulled out of class at school. The Principal of her school
didn’t even know, for several days into the following week, that the
interview even occurred. They were finally informed, after over a month
since the mandatory report was made to police, that there daughter was
reported to be a victim of sexual abuse! This would upset any parent!
The father said, “IF this had been a real sexual abuse case, Oregon
State Child Protective Services and Medford Police, knowing that neither
the mother nor my household (divorced) was under any suspicion, did not
inform us as parents (if this had been a real abuse case) for over a
month, and that is just wrong.� He also stated, “My daughters faith in
the entire judicial system has been destroyed by this. When she left the
“Safety Committee� meeting (at school), she knew they had lied to her,
and no longer trusts police as we taught her to. I cannot, as a parent,
fault her for this since I witnessed her being told (by the accuser)
that the case that sent her grandpa to jail for 4 & ½ months was based
on a lie! If I did that under oath in court, I would be charged with
perjury; unlike the accusing minor who lied on the stand, who is
protected by sexual abuse statutes.� Statistics show there are many more
Oregonians who have been improperly prosecuted by this unconstitutional
system. After all, 3 out of every 4 complaints are unfounded, and luck
of the draw says if you put enough of them through the system, some will
be convicted and their fines and fees will pay your salary! Any wonder
why investigation techniques are getting lax, as total cases keep
climbing? Do you know someone that this has happened to? Has someone in
your family been accused? If they live in Southern Oregon this
journalist would like to hear from them, or at least Email a short
version of their story (with contact information, which will remain
confidential, it is only so I can verify the story). I offer this story
as proof I will protect your identity, just as I did the parents quoted
in this article, at their request. I will withhold the names where it is
essential to protect the innocent and get the truth told. You can reach
Randy Johnson by E-mail at .

e-mail::








CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAMS....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.


CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...